Diagram and description of John Cram’s fan chair, 1786. American Philosophical Society.
The American Philosophical Society was founded in Philadelphia in 1743 by Ben Franklin to “promote useful knowledge.” Before the U.S. Patent Office was formed, one of the functions of the APS was as a repository for plans for inventions and devises for improving the human condition.
In 1786, Charles Wilson Peale, artist, soldier, scientist and member of the APS, sent a letter to Benjamin Rush with a diagram and description of a chair made for him by John Cram, an instrument maker. Peale’s letter, read to the Society in August 1786, described the chair as, “useful to the studious and others that are obliged to sit at their employment…to keep them cool…” The superstructure was wood and the fan was pasteboard.
The secretary’s notes for the meeting refer to John Cram as “an ingenious mechanic.” Not much is known about John Cram, other than he was an instrument maker. He was listed in a 1785 city directory with a shop on Lombard Street between Second and Third.
There are at least two fan chairs in existence, one at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s Virginia estate, and one in the New Haven Museum in Connecticut. Chair dated 1786-1800, Mount Vernon Collections, Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association.
The notes for the Mount Vernon chair state Washington purchased a fan chair in 1787 while he was in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention. The whereabouts of that chair are unknown, “but this version likely resembles the original.” The chair on display is dated 1786-1800 and the edge of the fan is decorated with a trailing vine.
The second chair, in the collection of the New Haven Museum, was owned by Dr. Eneas Munson. It is dated 1786-1790. The fan on Dr. Munson’s chair was painted to depict an eagle’s wing, “kidney-shaped fan, painted black with painted gold feathers.” Dr. Eneas Munson’s chair, 1786-1790. New Haven Museum.
The Mount Vernon Collection has a page for their fan chair and you can find it here. Under the photo of the chair is a link to a PDF with a full description of the chair’s construction and the fan mechanism (the website does not allow a direct link to the PDF).
Starting now, when you buy the book “Sharpen This” from the Lost Art Press website, it will not only be signed by the author (that would be Christopher Schwarz), but we’ll include our reprint of the 2017 “Sharpen This” sticker that some (hi, Mom!) might find mildly offensive. (If you get a sticker and don’t want it, we will be in no way offended if you choose to bin it. And anyway, we won’t know!)
We’re able to add the sticker at no extra cost now that our fulfillment operations are here in Covington, Kentucky. Right now, we’re committing to the sticker (and signature) through the end of the year.
What if you just bought a book and are now disappointed that you didn’t get a sticker? I will mail you a sticker, no charge, if you send me a Self-addressed Stamped Envelope (SASE).
Simply write your address on an envelope and put a stamp on it. Put that envelope in a second envelope and mail it to:
Sharpen This Lost Art Press 837 Willard St. Covington, KY, 41011
If you are an international customer, you can still get the naughty sticker, but you’ll need to have a USPS Global Forever Stamp on your SASE. I know that’s a PITA, but it’s the best we can do.
– Fitz
p.s. Please keep any comments/responses to comments civil.
The sticker fits nicely on the book’s cover – but we’ll leave it up to you as to where/if you apply it.
You are all so very kind – thank you! We have more offers now than we need now for tools, so we’re set there. And for those of you who are interested in donating a dollar or two toward a few unpaiud bills with this class, we have this link set up: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=QHGYHGZMS5EY6
– Fitz
Jerome Bias is teaching a scholarship class here next month. Most of these students are new to hand tool woodworking, so we are gathering tools to give them or loan them during the week.
I’ve got the saws and block planes and hammers we need. But if y’all have some excess user tools that have followed you home at one time or another that you could donate, read on.
Jack Planes I’m hoping to hand each student a sharp and functioning metallic jack plane they can take home and use. Nothing fancy. Just a Stanley No. 5 or equivalent. I don’t care about what “type” it is, just that it doesn’t need restoration (I don’t have time to do that, I’m afraid). I can easily grind and sharpen the iron.
12” Combination Square Likewise, I’d like to give them a 12” combination square to take home. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it would be nice if it were better than the plastic ones at the big box stores.
Hand Drill The students are going to be boring a lot of pilot holes for nails. If you have a functioning hand drill that could use a good home, let us know.
If you have any of these tools you could send, email Megan at fitz@lostartpress.com and let her know. She’ll give you shipping instructions (and let you know if we have already collected enough tools).
Thanks in advance for helping these six new woodworkers.
Join us at 837 Willard Street (the Lost Art Press storefront and shop) for our 2023 Holiday Open House, Saturday, December 2, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. As long as supplies last, we’ll hand out (free!) the old posters that magically appeared when we moved our stuff from our former warehouse to our own warehouse, the Anthe Building.
Speaking of the Anthe building, we’ll lead two tours thereof (starting from the shop on Willard): the first at 11 a.m.; the second at 2 p.m. The Anthe building is just more than a half-mile away at 407 Madison Ave., so if the weather allows, anyone who wants to can walk over (but there’s parking available if you prefer to drive).
We will have available at the storefront our full line of books and tools, of course. But more importantly we are here to answer your questions and talk about/demonstrate woodworking (in-person Open Wire!). And to show you the clock if you ask (if you know, you know – but let’s just say you need to be 21 to see the clock, and it’s not naughty). We’ll also have cookies and hot spiced cider.
We will also have on hand blemished books and tools (and possibly a few apparel items) at up to 50 percent off. (We might also have a few personal tools to sell – but no promises) Blemished books, tools and apparel are cash only.
The following is excerpted from “The Anarchist’s Design Book,” by Christopher Schwarz, an exploration of furniture forms that have persisted outside of the high styles that dominate every museum exhibit, scholarly text and woodworking magazine of the last 200 years.
There are historic furniture forms out there that have been around for almost 1,000 years that don’t get written about much. They are simple to make. They have clean lines. And they can be shockingly modern.
This book explores 18 of these forms – a bed, dining tables, chairs, chests, desks, shelving, stools – and offers a deep exploration into the two construction techniques (staked and boarded) used to make these pieces that have been forgotten, neglected or rejected.
Here’s a simple stool design that represents a lot of false starts, research and prototyping. It’s not perfect, but it is a nice, stout stool. The stool is based on 18th-century low stools from American homes. This stool is also an excellent introduction into building the seat and undercarriage of a full-blown chair.
This stool has a pine seat and hardwood legs – ash in this case. The seat is 13″ in diameter and the legs hold the seat about 16″ off the ground – a good height for a low stool. The H-stretcher is a bit of overkill. But I think you should include it. It will teach you how to add stretchers to any of the chairs in this book – or from other people’s books. So let’s go.
Make the Seat The seat is a softwood that is about 1-1/2″ to 1-5/8″ thick. You can glue up the seat from two bits of wood (that’s what I did) and put the seam in the dead center of the seat. Keep the leg joints away from this seam; you don’t want the legs levering the seat apart. (Yes, a long-grain-to-long-grain joint is stronger than the wood itself in a perfect world. But that is not where we live.)
Around & around. Here I’m marking out the diameter of the seat. Note the two holes in the corners of the blank. These are test mortises that will allow me to test the fit of the tenons on the legs. Waste not, blah blah, blah.
With the seat blank glued up, use a compass or trammel points to lay out the 13″-diameter seat. Cut the seat to shape. Then cut a 1/2″ x 1/2″ bevel on its underside. This bevel lightens the look (and the weight) of the stool. You can do this on the band saw or do it with a block plane or spokeshave. Now you can mark out the location of the joints. Here’s the easy way. On the underside of the seat, draw a line through the centerpoint of the circle. Make this line parallel or perpendicular to the glue seam in the seat (if you have a seam).
Around again. After cutting the seat round, tilt the saw’s table to 45° to cut the bevel on the underside of the seat. Mark the 1/2″ bevel on the seat’s edge and follow that with your saw’s blade.
Place a protractor on your pencil line and mark the seat at 45° on both the left and right sides of 90°. Connect the marks with the centerpoint and you will have a perfect “X” on the underside. Now take a ruler and mark out the location of the four leg mortises 1-1/2″ in from the edge of the seat’s bevel. (It’s all shown in the photo [below] if you look closely.)
Good layout. There are 100 ways to do this. Place the protractor on your line and mark the seat at 45° on both sides of the protractor. Connect these marks to the centerpoint. And done. Perfect.
Make the Legs The legs are 1-1/2″ x 1-1/2″ x 18″ and are made from a dead-straight hardwood such as oak, maple, ash or hickory. Knock off the edges until the legs are octagons. Then taper the legs so they taper to 1″ at the top.
For this project, I decided to use cylindrical tenons. While I prefer tapered tenons, cylindrical tenons are far more common in the historical record and are easier to make, especially if you own a lathe.
How this works. The bedan tool’s sizing attachment is set to .940″ – the diameter of the bit for the leg mortises. Slide the sizing tool toward the cutting edge until it matches this measurement. Then lock the position of the sizing attachment and make a test tenon. Really. Test tenon. Don’t ignore me.
The tenons for this stool are 1″ in diameter and 2-1/4″ long. Turning them on the lathe is straightforward. If you want your tenons to be dead-on accurate, I recommend you purchase a bedan tool with a sizing attachment. A bedan tool is basically a wide parting tool with its sides relieved (like a traditional mortise chisel) to allow it to maneuver in the cut without binding. The sizing tool is an attachment that clamps to the tool and allows you to set the diameter of the cut.
Perfect tenons. The sizing tool lets you cut tenons within .001″. The tooling works just like any standard parting tool.
To use the bedan tool and sizing attachment, first drill a test mortise and gauge the exact diameter of the bit that will drill your mortises. Set a dial caliper to that measurement (lock it) and use the caliper to set the bedan tool and its sizing attachment.
Test each tenon. After I cut each tenon, I check it in the test mortise (made with scraps from the seat). This is a backstop because I don’t trust my bedan sizing tool, though it has yet to let me down.
Bore the Mortises The leg mortises are bored at an 21° resultant angle. The sightline is 0° and runs directly into the centerpoint of the seat. Set a sliding bevel to 21° and tape it to the sightline. Clamp a backing board below the seat to reduce (but probably not eliminate) any splintering.
With this stool, I’m using a 24 mm bit from WoodOwl that is supposed to leave a clean exit hole without splintering. It does a pretty good job, though no bit is perfect (hence my backing board). These particular bits work best in an electric drill.
The tape helps. The vibrations from boring can make your sliding bevel move. And even a little bit of movement makes a big difference in the leg angles. So spring for the tape.
Drill the four mortises. Then put the legs into their mortises and have a gander at how accurate you were.
Rotate the legs in their mortises and orient them so their attractive surfaces face out. Then meaningfully mark the legs and the seat so you can get the legs back into this ideal arrangement.
Right about here. Putting the stretchers at this height makes the stool look like a chair that has been shrunk just a bit (which is a pretty accurate assessment of the design).
Now it’s time to bore the mortises for the side stretchers. These are positioned about 4″ to 4-1/2″ up from the floor. Here’s how to mark them out. First, level the stool like you are preparing to cut the legs to length. Shim the feet until the seat is level all around. Then cut a 4×4 block of wood to 4-1/2″ long and place it on the bench. Fetch the half-pencil (it’s a pencil planed to half its thickness). Mark the location of the mortises for the side stretchers on the legs.
On the tip of disaster. After you do this a few times, you’ll gladly bore these mortises without guidance from others. Until you get this confidence, have a spotter tell you if you need to raise or lower the drill to keep the bit in line with both mortise locations.
To bore the mortises, flip the chair upside down so the seat is on the benchtop. Place a couple sticks between the seat and benchtop to let the tenons poke through the seat. Then take an awl and mark the centerpoint of each mortise on each leg. I do this by eye. Measuring always seems to make it worse.
Tiny test tenons. These thin offcuts determine the final length of the stretcher. Pinch them together and mark across the offcuts. Remove the pieces and reassemble them to determine the final stretcher length.
Chuck a 5/8″ Forstner bit into a cordless drill. I drill the 7/8″-deep mortises in the legs entirely freehand, using the seat and the marks on the legs as a guide. Rotate the leg in its mortise so you can get the drill and the bit in position in line with the leg. The drill and bit should be aligned with the mortise on the opposite leg. The photo [“On the tip of disaster”] shows how this works.
Stretchers. The side stretchers are installed. And the medial stretcher is laid on top. Now we’re ready to drill the mortises for the medial stretcher.
If you lack confidence because this is your first rodeo, have a spotter give you some directions. They should be able to tell you if your drill bit is in line with both mortise locations in the legs. Drill the blind mortises, stopping before the bit explodes out the backside.
Boring again. These mortises are only 5/8″ deep. Put some fresh tape on your bit before boring these joints. This is not where you want to make a fatal error.
Make the Stretchers The stretchers are 1″ x 1″ material that has been planed octagonal. After preparing the overlong stock for the stretchers, you need to determine how long they should be for your stool. To do this, fetch two skinny scraps. Pinch them together and press the ends into the bottoms of the mortises. Make a pencil mark across the two scraps. Remove them from the mortises. Reassemble them with the marks aligned. Measure the overall length, and that’s the finished length of the stretcher.
Do this for both stretchers. Mine were slightly different lengths. If you are cutting the tenons on the lathe, then add 2″ to the calculated length to give you some room to work without running your tools into the headstock and tailstock of the machine. (I wrote this sentence to remind myself to do this next time.)
Cut the 5/8″-diameter tenons on the side stretchers using the same techniques outlined for the legs. Yup to the bedan tool and the sizing attachment. After turning the tenons, saw the stretchers to their final length and install them in their mortises.
The medial stretcher is easy. Mark the centerpoint on each side stretcher. Use the same 5/8″ Forstner bit to drill a 5/8″-deep mortise in each side stretcher. Once again, I drill these freehand. Keep the bit 90° to the stretcher and parallel to one of the facets of the octagonal stretcher.
You know what to do next. Get the skinny scraps and use them to determine the finished length of the medial stretcher. Cut the stretcher 2″ overlong. Turn the tenons on the ends with the bedan tool. Cut the medial stretcher to finished size and fit everything. If the stool doesn’t explode, you are ready to glue it up.
Assembly Before you disassemble the dry-fit stool, mark where the wedges should go in the legs’ tenons. I use a Sharpie for this to avoid confusion. Disassemble all the parts and mark them up so you can assemble them in the same orientation with glue in the equation.
Kerf the legs to receive wedges. Use a band saw or a handsaw for this. You want the kerf to be of significant thickness. Make some 1″-wide wedges for the legs.
Right before assembly, clean up all the tool marks left on the legs, stretchers and seat with planes and spokeshaves. This is quick work with sharp tools.
Here is the sequence for assembly. Learn this and you’ll be ready for a full-on chair in your future. Glue the medial stretcher to the side stretchers. Twist the parts until the assembly sits flat.
Put glue in the mortises in the legs. Wipe off any excess and put the stretchers’ tenons into the legs in the mortises. This will be an ungainly thing, like a baby goat. Rotate the legs until the assembly is stable. Set it on the bench.
Paint the interior of the mortises in the seat with glue. Do not skimp or get in a hurry. Take a deep breath.
Navigate the legs into their mortises. This might require some grabbing and bending. That’s OK as long as the seat doesn’t split. The goal is to get the tip of each tenon into its mortise.
Tap the legs down, working around the stool’s four legs until the legs are seated. Small taps are better than big ones.
Flip the assembled stool over. Paint the wedges with glue and drive them in with a hammer.
The great leveler. This inexpensive saw made its way into our shop via an unknown path. I didn’t purchase it. No one sent it to me. It just was there one day. So we stoned off the set of its teeth and use it as a huge (and fast) flush-cutting saw. If you are visited by the saw fairy (as I was) this is a good thing to do.
Let the glue dry overnight. The next morning, saw the tenons flush to the seat. There are (at least) 50 ways to level your tenons. When your seat is flat and not saddled, the fastest way is with a Japanese ryoba saw. We took a hardware-store saw and stoned the sides of its teeth with a diamond plate to remove the set of the teeth. It now barely scratches the seat in use.
After sawing off the tenons, plane the seat to remove any toolmarks.
Level the Feet As shown in other sections of this book, there are lots of ways to level the feet. Picking one method depends on how your head works. Here’s how I did it for this stool. I first leveled the seat using wedges underneath the four legs.
Then I determined the final seat height (16″) and made a block of wood to guide a pencil. The height of the block represented the amount of leg I needed to saw off to achieve the final seat height. In this case, the block was about 1″ high. I placed this block on the benchtop and used a half-pencil. Then I sawed off the legs to their finished lengths. I then chamfered the feet to prevent the feet from splintering out when the stool is dragged across a floor.
The half-pencil and a block of wood helps you mark out the correct length of the legs.
And then you are done with construction. Finishing these stools can be as simple as a coat of linseed oil and wax. Or you can dive into milk paint, soap finishes or the Wild World of Wiping Varnishes. Do your best work – you don’t want to be accused of polishing a turd. (And you thought you’d get away without a single stool joke.)
